Richardson
by TakenHawkeye
Summary: Hawkeye grieves for a patient, in a way only he can. Involves drinking, dancing, Margaret, BJ, and mood swings. Will review all who review me.


"Care for a dance, Major?"

Margaret glances up from nursing her scotch and soda, eyeing the man before her. "Pierce, you're drunk."

He nods, ignoring the fact that the room is swimming before him. "That or six martinis and a rye just went to waste." He holds an unsteady hand out. "Dance with me."

Sighing, Margaret hears the inflection in his voice, the almost pleading quality. She pauses to finish the glass, sliding it toward Igor when it's empty. She takes hold of the hand, pulling herself to her feet. "A Lindy and that's all. Nothing funny, Pierce."

"A Lindy." Hawkeye grins, holding his hand up in a solemn promise. Carefully, they make their way to the far edge of the dance floor, Hawkeye stumbling along the way. 

"I thought," Margaret says, as a new song begins, "That you were with Richardson." She reaches a firm hand across the inebriated man's shoulder, guiding his touch to her hip as she does so. 

"I was." Hawkeye clasps her free hand, and they begin to hop and twirl. "He was." He hums along -- loudly -- to the song in order to cover the pain in his eyes.

Margaret's breath catches, though her feet carry on smoothly. Years of classes do not abandon her, even now. She takes a moment to regroup, and replies, clinical as always, "That's unfortunate, Doctor."

Cynically, Hawkeye shoots her a bleary look. "Unfortunate," He echoes, "Was not my word for it." He turns his head from her gaze, catching sight of BJ in the corner, staring as they danced.

This is ignored, almost dutifully, by Margaret. "You reek of booze."

Hawkeye keeps his eyes across the room, watching BJ watch. "You have a way, Major, of making that sound like a bad thing."

"It was meant that way."

"Your charm astounds me." Hawkeye's voice is deadpanned, slurred, and always sarcastic. He glances at the woman who's hand is laying limply on his shoulder, the woman who's somehow taking the lead of the dance. "He was the only child of a mother paralyzed by a stroke."

"Hmm?" Margaret wonders, for a moment, how much longer she can go on before politely excusing herself and heading back to the bar. Telepathically, she pleads with Igor for a brandy to be sent her way. He turns away, to no avail.

"Richardson."

"Are we still talking about him?"

Hawkeye bites back the scream of frustration. "Who's the drunk one, Margaret, you or me?"

Smoothly, effortlessly, the song changes. They move closer, ready to waltz to the crooning of Sinatra.

"I'm sure it wasn't your fault, Pierce."

Hawkeye makes a grimace, of annoyance or pain no one can rightly tell. "I've heard that before. I've heard it all before." They spin and he dips, ignoring the tempo of the song, and that waltzes do not have dips in them. "Potter with his 'Now son, you did your best', Father Mulcahy with his 'God's will', Radar with his 'Gee, I sure am sorry, sir', and now you."

They pass the bar, and he thinks, briefly, that Igor provides the best comfort.

"It's all true." Margaret wills a reason to step back from this looming man, in presence and personality.

"Truth is inconsequential." His eloquence is notorious, even when the booze slows it down.

The song slows to an end, and they slow to a stop. Margaret shakes her head, sadly, as she pulls away. "Pierce --"

"Margaret?"

"Nothing." She turns away, back to the waiting glass, and quickly forgets her pained dance partner.

Hawkeye looks away, filled to the brim with something he can't rightly name, and slowly staggers toward the door. Dimly, he's aware of the crisp Korean wind, and wonders why he allowed himself such an easy rejection. He pushes all thoughts from his mind, thinking instead of the waiting still. It takes him a moment to realize he's not alone, that behind him BJ follows silently.

"I'm not so drunk," Hawkeye says over his shoulder, "That I can't find the still on my own." He pauses. "The Swamp." It's unknown, even to him, which one he means.

Still, BJ is silent.

"He had a daughter, back home. Just born." Hawkeye kicks at the dirt. "Richardson."

This time, he's graced with a response. "It's awful, and it's terrible, and there's nothing anyone can do about it."

Hawkeye slams his way into the Swamp, noticing that BJ has a knack for getting right to the heart of things. Beating around a bush is not in the man's nature, while it's all Hawkeye seems to know. "And he died out here, out in some foreign country thousand of miles away from home, surround by strangers who couldn't do anything for him except watch." He finds himself falling, backward, onto his cot. He meant to head straight for the still, add another martini to the six he's already drained, but finds that he doesn't want to move -- not now or ever.

"Hawkeye --" The soft, almost patronizing tone BJ is so well known for. A small comfort to know the world carries on, even as a man turns corpse.

"But what's it matter, right?" Hawkeye kicks at his boots, struggling to get them off. It's too much, too tight, and he grips at the tags around his neck. Suddenly, it's hard to breath. He makes another desperate attempt to rid himself of his boots, tugging at his dog tags.

BJ sighs, crouching down to work the laces. Hawkeye leans back, eyes closing shut.

"I mean," He continues, words pouring out of him faster than he can bring them forth, "What's one man in the scheme of things? One man in a war of thousands?" He squeezes his eyes shut, calling for the darkness to engulf the image of Richardson's face that swims behind his eyelids as BJ slides his right foot free.

Predictably, the beaten blonde man is silent. He knows the man before him well enough to allow him his ramblings.

"What's it matter if he's just another name, another record, another form?" Hawkeye's stomach clenches uncomfortably around the cheap gin, and he peers out one open eye at the stooped form of BJ. "Beej?"

BJ's head snaps up, tossing the left boot in the vague direction of Charles's cot. "Hawk?"

Slowly, the dark-haired man -- bitterly he remembers the seven new gray hairs and knows he has only so much longer as the dark-haired man -- rolls from the cot and onto the floor. Muttering under his breath, he fights the lump forming in his throat.

"Henry -- when Tommy died, Henry said there were rules, and that the rules -- but this was routine, a routine death and it shouldn't -- he said the rules -- I shouldn't be so upset that I --"

BJ kneels on the dusty Swamp floor, and wonders if it's worth it to make sense of Hawkeye's words. Try as he might, he can't seem to, but figures the meaning is clear enough.

"Hawkeye," His voice, soothing, as if this were just another nightmare had by Erin, "Hawkeye."

Carefully, in deliberate movements, Hawkeye crawls across the ground, unable to find the strength for much else in his grief. The alcohol presses down on him, choking him, and he feels the white-hot wetness on his cheek announce his tears.

Just as careful, just as deliberate, BJ scoops the shattered man up, wrapping his arms around him. Silent sobs wrack the frail form, the lanky form, as Hawkeye begins to openly weep. Burying his face his BJ's chest, his words are muffled, but both understand the feeling behind them. They rock together, back and forth, weathering the worst of the storm.

Though Richardson escapes with tears, the dead man is not all that bring this about. It is defeat and grief that soak BJ's front, he acknowledges, as the continue they're steady rhythm. Back, forth, back, forth.

Eventually, the sobs subside, and Hawkeye manages to disentangle himself from his comforter, tossing a sheepish glance over his shoulder as he climbs back into his cot. Giving a slight groan at the effort, BJ pulls himself up, staring down at Hawkeye all the while.

"It hurts, BJ, it hurts so much."

"I know." This is a whisper, hardly spoken at all, yet it echoes throughout the silence.

Hawkeye, exhausted from alcohol and emotion, fights to keep his eyes wide. "I'm so tired, so very tired. I don't think I can --"

"Shh." A comfort, soothing, just Erin with a nightmare. A simple monster in the closet, look Hawk, nothing there. "Get some sleep, Hawk."

"BJ?"

"Yeah, Hawk?"

"You'd never leave me mid-dance step, right?"

He doesn't bother asking. "No."

"Beej?" A plead this time.

"You did your best."

A mumbling sound of appreciation. "Thanks." And with that Hawkeye's slipped away, deep into the grasp of unconsciousness.

BJ sighs, blinking away the sudden tears gathering in his own eyes as he runs a hand through his hair. Leaning over to pull the scratchy wool blanket over the rail-thin man, he catches sight of an ambulance through the Swamp's netted walls. He pauses, watching as they load a stretcher into it and close the door with a final metallic thud. Richardson, he supposes.

One last glance at Hawkeye and BJ turns, stumbling back to his own cot, readying himself as a barrier against the darkness that threatens to seep into his friend, threatens to swallow him whole.

Perhaps someday, but not this night, not this patient.


End file.
